The Funeral
by EreshkigalGirl
Summary: What if Vidanric had gone with his mother to a funeral at Tlanth when he was still a child? In ch. 2, little Mel gets her first look at little Danric.
1. Vidanric

PRE-A/N: Hey, all! This is kind of a prequel to CCD, through the eyes of an 11-year-old Vidanric. I'm a sucker for the weird "they knew each other before they knew each other" plot lines. If you don't know what I'm talking about, read this and you'll understand.

The idea came from someone who reviewed Interception and asked for a story about Savona and Danric as kids, always daring each other. I went on a little different road with this. This is more: What if Elestra I, Dan's mom, had known Ranisia, Mel's mom, and the Renseleaus family had gone to her funeral?

DISCLAIMER- Charac's, original plot, and all that other good stuff not mine; just this story.

Ach-ach-hem!

Mother got the message at breakfast one cloudy autumn morning. It had made her very sad, and Father had gone to put his arms around her as she started to cry. I was quickly taken away to my tutors so that my parents could talk and make arrangements. It wasn't until later that I learned what had happened form my parents' steward, Diesvan. One of Mother's friends had died.

All day, I wondered who this person was that my Mother grieved for. At supper that day I found out that the friend's name was Countess Ranisia Astiar, and Mother was going to leave at dawn the next day for Tlanth so that she could attend the funeral. Father couldn't go because of his leg, so I volunteered to go with my Mother. There were some objections at first about me missing my lessons, and that Father may need me at home, and it was a three day long journey and we knew how I got if I was in a carriage for too long. In the end, I assured them that I was ahead in all of my lessons anyway, Father didn't need me as much as Mother needed a male escort, and I would ride a horse the whole way if I had to so that I wouldn't get sick, so I was allowed to go.

At daybreak Mother and I kissed Father good-bye and left with a small group of guards. The days passed uneventfully while I rode on horseback. We arrived at the tiny village- barely even that- nearly a bell-change after the sun had already set on the last day of our journey. I could hear a strange, sweepingly sad music that seemed to seep into every home and shop, stone and garden. I was stiff and sore, refusing to admit it to anyone, of course, but I was intrigued by what I heard enough that my discomfort became more bearable compared to the anguish I heard in that song.

Regardless, I was more and more disappointed when, after riding from nearly one end of the town to the other, there was no inn. We approached Castle Astiar and hesitated for a moment at the near blackness of it, as if no one were home. Mother got out of the carriage, and I dismounted, thankfully. She sent a messenger up to the door. The courier she'd sent with her intentions to come should have gotten there by now, and they were to be expecting us. In a moment, a light from inside came wobbling through one of the ground floor rooms and proceeded toward the great doors. In another, the door opened. After a brief correspondence, we were invited in by a lean, wiry woman who dipped a deep bow to Mother and me, introducing herself as Julen. She apologized for the lack of ceremony, but it was a dark time in Tlanth with the Countess so soon gone.

We were shown to the parlor and told that the Count would be come to greet us shortly. Mother and I waited tiredly for several long minutes until a worn, disheartened man wandered in, his whole face looking miserable, as if his entire world had shattered, and there was no way to find all of the pieces, much less put them back together. Mother addressed him as Count Arles, but I was skeptical. He was very unlike any count I had known in his common-weave, unadorned clothing and mussed hair.

The Count apologized to us again, saying that he had not gotten a chance to read Mother's letter yet and had not known we were coming. He invited us to sleep in the Residence Wing with his family, since- he said this with a derisive snort- the Guest Wing needed a new roof and he had not had a chance to have it repaired yet. Mother answered for us both, saying that we would be honored to; she was very sorry to hear about his wife's passing. Count Arles clenched his teeth together and had to look away.

He led us down several short hallways, past darkened rooms behind tapestries. Many were silent. Behind one tapestry I could just hear someone crying their heart out, alone. There was no one there for comfort, to dry the tears; I could tell it even from outside the room. A noise behind me caused me to turn around. The maid who had opened the door for us and showed us to the parlor had come behind us and now pushed aside the tapestry to the room that housed all that heartache and entered. Before I entered the room I would be spending the night in I could hear the shooshing, murmuring, soothing sounds coming from just the next room.

I slept poorly that night from a combination of aching muscles as a result of three days in the saddle, and the sounds of sniffling that came from the room next door. I kept getting the urge to go see if whoever it was was alright, but flopped over on the straw mattress and tried to find a more comfortable position. Nothing seemed to help either of my problems.

The next morning was the funeral ceremony and the lighting of the pyre. I dressed in the warm, autumn-appropriate black velvet and heavy linen suit that I had had my manservant pack. I pulled my hair back from my face and clasped it with a black ribbon. Once I had pulled on my good, black leather boots I went to meet Mother in her room so that we could go down together.

In the hall I was surprised to see a boy about my age, dressed in home-spun black, his dark red hair oddly short, and a dour expression on his face standing at my immediate left, at the tapestry where the crying had come from last night. He barely glanced at me when I walked out, all of his attention focused on the flimsy tapestry.

"Mel?" he called inside. "Come on, Mel, we have to go down now."

"No!" I heard the broken cry from inside as I quickly turned away down the corridor. "I'm not going! I won't! If I don't say g'bye, she has to come back!"

"Mel," the boy sighed and went inside the room without invitation.

I tapped at the tapestry to Mother's borrowed room and entered. When I saw her face, it was tense and there were tears on her cheeks. She was dressed all in black as well. She turned to me and held her arms out. I went to her and she gave me an unaccustomed hug. I tentatively wrapped my arms around her and patted her back.

"You heard young Branaric outside in the hall there?" she asked when she'd finally pulled back.

I shrugged, then nodded. "I didn't know his name."

"His sister's name is Meliara," Mother said. "She was the one in the room next to you. She's taking her mother's death very hard. They all are, really. And who wouldn't?" She took in a shaky breath and tried to smooth her bodice down. "I can hardly believe it myself. We hadn't seen each other in years. Ranisia was so much younger than I was. I met her when she was in Alsais, in Colend. I was already married to your father, but she was only sixteen at the time. I was surprised at how fast friends we became. And now..."

She broke off and had to press a handkerchief to her eyes.

Not long after, we were on our way down the stairs and out to the meadow where the ceremony was to be held. It was a bright, chilly day, and the meadow was filled. The townspeople had come out, as well as every servant from the castle. The whole village must have been deserted. Mother and I walked through the crowd, which parted like high grass when walking through a field, and ended up near the Astiar family.

They were a small family, though bigger than mine, and wounded at the moment, trying to stand tall, but emotionally they were bowed over like trees in the most violent storm. Count Arles Astiar stood apart from his children, apart from the entire assembly, and listened austerely as the final rights and spells were spoken over the pyre where the body of his wife lay. The boy I'd seen that morning was standing solemnly by the woman, Julen, who had gone in to comfort his sister last night, and beside her stood a round-faced girl with dark, coal colored hair. But it was the much smaller girl standing in the protective circle of her brother's arms that held my attention.

The girl's hair was the color of the ancient redwood doors we had at home, and the color of the leaves changing in the forests around the meadow we stood in, and of embers, hanging loose around her shoulders, framing a pale, oval face. She too was dressed in poor clothing, not the rich style of other courtiers' children I knew. She held onto her brother's arms clasped about her shoulders and chest as if they were the only thing in this world that were keeping her from dissolving like sugar in water, or keeping her from flinging herself into the fire with her mother. Tears were making steady, dripping tracks down her face, and no matter how many times she snuffled her nose, it was still running and she had to rub at it with the sleeve of her inky dress. This was the girl who had kept me awake last night wondering if a person could sob their life out into a pillow.

As the fire crackled and ate at the body of the Countess, I kept my eyes on the Astiar girl. That was the only reason that I noticed when she began mumbling under her breath and wave her fingers at the fire. Embers sparked and popped, the fire dying down unnaturally soon as the girl continued on. The other onlookers started to murmur, a small wave of panic, about this strangeness, but no one recognized the cause. Finally her father noticed the cause of the fire dying down before the pyre and body were consumed. He stepped before his daughter, slapped her hand down and dragged her roughly from her brother's grasp, silencing her.

"Meliara! What were you doing!?!" he asked as the fire returned to its original height and force.

"M-m-mama did that wu-once to put out a g-grease fire in the ku-kit-t-tchen!" she hiccupped. "I wa-want-t-ted to make this fire go away, too. J-just like she mu-made that one go away!"

Count Arles dropped to one knee in front of his daughter and looked her squarely in the eye, his hands grasping her small shoulders. "You must never try to do that again, do you understand me? Never! And nothing else of the same kind. I'll not have them take you away from me, too!"

The child gulped and nodded as the rest of us watched, bewildered. He shook the girl, hard, once, making her head wobble back and forth on her neck. "Promise me, Meliara," he demanded. "Promise me that you will never do anything like that again."

"I p-p-romise," she ended in a sob.

He continued to kneel there for a long moment. He stood up jerkily, and walked away without another word to anyone. When he had gotten several strides away, Meliara turned around and bolted for the tree-line at the edge of the meadow and disappeared into the forest. Branaric took a step to go after her, calling her name, but the maid Julen put a hand on his shoulder and shook her head, and just watched the girl go.

I looked up at Mother for an explanation, but she was looking back and forth between Count Astiar and his daughter, both retreating in opposite directions from one another. She didn't have an answer either.

When we returned to the castle, we were apologized to, yet again, for the Count's rude behavior, and also for our short stay. We were asked to please get our things and leave as soon as possible. None of the Astiar's were in a humor to have even well meaning guests at that time. Mother and I quickly changed into traveling clothes and retrieved the rest of our belongings. We left before the bell for third green-change had sounded, supplied with a three-day-trip's worth of food for the journey.

Later we learned that Count Arles had set fire to the library in the castle not a bell after we had crossed the farthest boundaries of the village. When we arrived home, Mother finally agreed to help Father in his plans to overthrow King Galdran, and I was soon informed that the death of my mother's friend had not been an accident, as many were told to believe. Just like my cousin Russav's parents, Galdran had ordered the Countess Astiar murdered on the road, though no one yet knew why. Once again, I volunteered my services. It took me many years to remember the exact reason why.


	2. Meliara

PRE-A/N: Um, so, lots of people wanted an update to this story, and I couldn't really think of too much, except to do the same one from the others' points of view.

Disclaimer: not mine.

-Felsong: I made up Arles, cuz I looked and looked, but I couldn't find the Count's name anywhere.

Here's Mel:

I had been outside all day when I heard Julen calling me in. She hardly ever did that in warm weather, so I was surprised enough to go. Her face looked white, like milk before the cream has been scraped off. She grabbed me by the hand and dragged me back to the castle, going too fast and not slowing down when I asked her to.

Julen brought me to the tower room that Father did all his business from. He was facing out the high window and didn't seem to know I'd come in. Bran was in there, too. He was sitting at the table, on a cushion. He had his arms folded on the top of the table, and his head buried in his folded arms. He was shaking, and now I was worried. Bran was always smiling, and now he wasn't.

"Milord?" Julen rasped. "I brought Meliara."

"Thank you, Julen," Father said flatly. "If you would go compile a list of names that I need to send word to about Renisia? And make sure Keighli(1) is well taken care of until she's healed."

"Yes, milord," she said, dropping a curtsey and leaving the tree of us alone.

For a long time Father said nothing, and I went to sit next to Braneric. When my brother looked up at me, I saw the tears. That made me scared. Why was Bran crying?

"Meliara, I've just gotten a letter," Father said, getting my attention. "It's very bad news."

"What's wrong, Papa?" I asked. "Why is Bran crying?"

"Because..." Father had to stop and clear his throat. "Because your mother... she's gone now."

I was confused. I knew she was gone. I'd cried when she left last week. Where they just now noticing that she wasn't here? "Papa," I squeaked out, "she's been gone. You were there when we waved her off."

"No, Mel," Bran cut in, his voice sloppy and thick. "Mama's dead. She's not comin' home anymore."

I didn't understand. The old mouser in the kitchen died last winter. One of Papa's best hunting dogs had died. My uncle in Sles Adran(2) had died, but people I knew didn't die. Bran was just playing a joke. I looked up at Papa to make him yell at Bran for lying and being mean.

But Papa didn't do anything.

"No," I shook my head.

"I'm sorry, Meliara," Father said. "I wish there had been a more gentle way to tell you. I wish it had not happened at all. If only she hadn't- But it's too late now."

"No!" I shouted, refusing to believe it. "No, no, no!"

I bolted from the room, down the long, spinning stairs, getting a little dizzy.

"Mel!" Bran called after me.

I ignored him, continuing to run. I was crying before I had a thought to cry. My heart was pounding, making me run faster, even though I had no idea where I was going. I broke through the doors and made a straight line for the trees where I had only just recently been dragged from. I wanted to lose myself in the forest.

The Hill Folk were playing a song I had never heard before. It was low and dragging, the higher notes coming only every once in a while. I stopped only a few strides into the forest. This song only made everything worse. This song told me that they knew what had happened to my mother and that it wasn't a lie. If the Hill Folk knew it was true, then it was true, because they could always tell when someone was dealing falsely, and they never lied.

I sank down to the ground, bawling my eyes out. It took me a long time to notice the willowy, elegant movements of shadows breaking away from the rest of the patterned darkness in the forest. The Hill Folk moved toward me, surrounded and gathered me up with them, and led me to their clearing. The dances in mourning of Mama had already begun when I was ushered into the circle. I refused to join in. Joining them would make her death more real.

I must have stayed there in the mountains of Tlanth for days, but I hardly noticed the light coming and fading. I watched the Hill Folk dance, and I ate what they provided, not realizing that I was hungry until the next meal was given to me.

I went home the day that Mama came home in the back of a wagon, all laid out with a sheet over her. I watched as the wagon rolled through the streets of the village and eventually came to a stop in front of the castle. At first my feet felt like roots, stuck in the ground and not letting me move. Then I was running again, full tilt toward the bed of the wagon, screaming for my mother. (3)

It was the blacksmith's wife that finally caught me just before I jumped up into the bed and pulled the sheet off of the body. She towed me away from the wagon and into the castle, then deposited me in the arms of her sister-in-law. Julen wrapped those arms around me to keep me from fighting my way back outside. She took me to my room, where I eventually cried myself out for the time being, and fell asleep.

After dark, I was woken up by quite a commotion down stairs. It sounded like someone had arrived at the gate, but nobody ever came to Tlanth.

The wild thought that somehow Mama was really alive, and all of the last few days had been a bad dream, propelled me out of my room and down the stairs. On the landing just above the main hall I could hear Father talking to someone in the parlor. I even heard a woman answer back, which was enough to make me think I was right. I had gotten half way to the open doorway of the front parlor when I was able to see inside. The faint light of the Fire Sticks showed me a woman who was not my mother, and a pale-haired boy who was about Bran's age. Had this been any other time, I would have gone in and gawked at their fine clothing, and asked them a hundred questions, but not then. At that moment, all I could think was, 'That is not my mother.'

I spun right around and charged back to my room, flinging the tapestry out of my way as I barreled in. I launched myself onto my mattress, sobbing, again. Even after Julen came in and held me, tried to calm me down, even after I heard the candle-change from second blue to third white, then on to first white, I couldn't stop. It wasn't until deep into second white that I finally fell asleep in Julen's arms.

I woke up again at second gold. I looked around and saw that Julen was gone. She had laid out my one black dress for me. The last time I'd worn it was this past winter when Mama had gotten a letter that her older brother had died overseas. I hadn't understood why I'd needed to wear it at the time, hadn't understood what it was like to lose someone I loved like Mama losing her brother. Now I knew.

I put the dress on, mainly because I didn't have the energy to pick something out for myself, but I refused to go downstairs. Going down stairs would mean that I was alright. It meant knowing that Mama really was dead, that I was going to go to the lighting of the pyre, and I was too stubborn to let my last hope fade just yet.

It didn't take very long for someone to be sent up for me. I was just starting to listen to the morning sounds coming from the room next door, wondering who was over there, when the first taps came on the tapestry-door to my room. I set my jaw and ignored them. More tapping came.

"Mel?" Braneric called inside. "Come on, Mel, we have to go down now."

"No!" I shouted, my voice sounding rusty. "I'm not going! I won't! If I don't say g'bye, she has to come back!"

"Mel," I heard him sigh, then barged into my room without invitation.

I buried my face into my pillow so that I wouldn't have to talk to him. I hoped he would go away and leave me alone. I hoped he would stay so that I wouldn't be alone. I hoped that this wasn't really happening at all.

"Mel," Bran repeated, sitting down on my bed next to me. "You have to go. If you don't say g'bye to Mama now, you won't get the chance. All the time we have left to send her off is today. She would want to say 'bye to you. She'd want that chance. We gotta go; you gotta come with me."

I fought the truth for another few minutes, as long as I could. In the end, I had to admit that I wanted the chance to say goodbye. If I didn't go now, I was going to regret it. At eight years old, I knew that much already. So I sat up from my pillow and looked my big brother in the eye.

"Fine, but that doesn't mean I have to like it."

He tried to smile and barely made his mouth twitch. He stood up and offered me his hand, which I took, and he hauled me up behind him.

"Do you think you can brush your hair before we go down?" he asked me.

I scowled at him, but ran my fingers through the reddish, shoulder length mess. It was down, which was unusual for me. Mama and Julen always had me put it in braids and tie it back so that it would stay neat. Mama always wished that I'd let my hair grow out, but I always said that it was easier to keep it short, citing that her own long hair always got in the way whenever I tried to take her out into the mountains with me. I sighed and dropped my chin to my chest, remembering Mama's wish that I grow my hair out. In a snap, I decided that I would grow it long, just like hers.

"What was that?" Bran asked.

"I'm going to grow my hair out like Mama had it," I said resolutely. "Starting today."

"Fine, but let's get downstairs before Papa has to come get us," he frowned. He was much more worried about Papa than I was. I hardly knew the man, I had no idea what his moods were, but Bran seemed to know.

We went out dutifully, though the closer I got to the bottom of the stairs, the closer I got to the door, the road, the meadow where the big fort of logs and sticks held up the body that used to be my mother, the more I started breaking apart inside. I wished I'd stayed in my room. At least in there I had been starting to dry out. Out here, I was going to cry again, I knew it. I was already crying.

Bran led me to a spot in the circle of townsfolk and castle servants next to Julen and her daughter, my best human friend, Oria. He wrapped his arms around my chest and pulled me back against him. I think he needed to hug me as much as I needed the hug, so I reached up and held onto his arms.

Our father was standing off to the side of us, and neither wanted to call attention to us being the last ones to arrive. I looked further around the circle and found that I knew almost all of the faces there, every Tlanthi resident I knew by name. There were only two here I didn't know. It was the woman and the boy from last night. They were dressed in better clothing, and more jewels than anyone at home had seen in years and years. I wondered what they were doing here.

"Bran," I whispered up. "Who's that over there?"

He glanced over, then back down at me. "That's just one of Mama's friends."

I was confused for a moment before I realized that he had been talking about the woman. I had meant the boy. He must have been her son, I figured. I wondered why we had never seen them before now.

Julen must have caught me glancing at the pair of well-dressed guest, because she poked me on the shoulder while the priests intoned the last rights, and whipered down at me, "Don't stare, Meliara. It's not a polite thing to do, and it shows a poor raising. Besides, we're here for your mother."

'Did she think I forgot that?' I wondered as I jerked my attention back to the pyre. How could I? And I hadn't been staring. I just wanted to look anyplace but at the spot where the torches had been set. Where the fires were starting to eat their way to the center from opposite ends.

I remembered how my mother smelled: like flowers and the wind on the first day of spring. She never smelled like smoke, and I was afraid that that was the only smell I would think of when I remembered her from now on. I shut my eyes and tried to concentrate on what I remembered.

Mama was beautiful. She played the harp; her fingers would move across the strings like fish playing tag in the brook, and the music plinked along, sometimes floated along, all through the house. Her arms were stronger than they looked, but never hard when they held me, almost as if I was held by the branches of a tree that was there to catch me when I fell, but that I could ignore once I was resting on them. Her favorite color was a blue halfway between a sapphire and an ekirth. I remembered that because she told me once when I found a necklace with both of those jewels in it on her vanity, before she'd had to sell it to help pay the king's taxes. Her favorite food was roasted duck with some kind of fruit dressing that we had to stop making a year ago because we couldn't afford the ingredients anymore. She loved me, and Bran, and Father, and hated someone called Courtiers.

I had opened my eyes sometime during the memories and couldn't help gazing on as the flames covered the entire pyre, and mother's body was lost behind the wall of hot orange. I was hiccupping and my nose was runny. I tried to snuffle it, but the smoke got in my nose and made it run more. I glared at the fire, wishing that it would just go out and let me have my Mama back.

A memory was jogged, sudden and unexpected. It had happened just a few weeks ago, before Mama had left on her trip. We had been in the kitchen, helping with the feast for the harvest festival. Something that had a lot of drippings had caught on fire, and Mama had started saying something over and over, and the flames went out. Later, she taught me the poem so that if something like that happened while she was gone I could stop it. We had practiced on a small candle that she lit and relit with a Fire Stick until I got it right.

I started saying the poem over and over, and waved my fingers at the fire that was eating my mother, just the way she'd taught me how to do. She'd promised to teach me more when she got back, and I wanted her to have the chance. Maybe, I thought, maybe if I can put the fire out, Mama will see how good I am, and she'll have to come back and teach me more, just like she promised.

The big fire took a long time to start guttering, but after a while the flames shrank down, just like with the grease fire, and just like with the candle I had practiced on. I heard the sounds of the other people in the circle, but I didn't let it distract me. I kept on repeating the poem that my mother taught me until Father noticed what I was doing, came over, and slapped my hand away.

"Meliara! What were you doing!?!" he shouted at me. I could see the fire behind him growing back into the monster that I had almost killed.

"M-m-mama did that wu-once to put out a g-grease fire in the ku-kit-t-tchen!" I shouted back. "I wa-want-t-ted to make this fire go away, too. J-just like she mu-made that one go away!"

Papa knelt down on one knee and looked me squarely in the eye. His big hands grabbing hold of my shoulders. "You must never try to do that again," he said, "do you understand me? Never! And nothing else of the same kind. I'll not have them take you away from me, too!"

I took a big gulp of air, struggling to breathe. He didn't understand what I had been trying to do. He wouldn't understand! He didn't think that she could back, like I did. And if he didn't believe, then I had to let her go. If Father didn't believe that she could come back, maybe she couldn't.

With no more fight left in me anymore, I nodded my head. Regardless, he shook me so hard, just once, that it made my head wobble back and forth on my neck. "Promise me, Meliara," he demanded. "Promise me that you will never do anything like that again."

I believed what he wanted! Why couldn't he just leave me alone!?

"I p-p-romise," I sobbed.

He continued to kneel there for a long moment. He stood up and walked away without another word to anyone. He turned his back on my mother. When he had gotten several long strides away, I couldn't stand being in front of everyone anymore, so I turned around in the opposite direction and bolted for the tree-line at the edge of the meadow and disappeared into the forest. I didn't hear anyone behind me, and I was glad. I didn't want any of them following me, not even Bran.

Unfortunately, I couldn't hide from the Hill Folk. They came whether I wanted them to or not, drifting out of the shadows. They took me back to the circle I had spent the last few days in. The music they played for Mama had never stopped all this while, and I had a feeling that it would go on for a few days more. That night I danced with them. That night I mourned, instead of just grieved. I had finally accepted in my promise to Papa that my mother was not coming back. For awhile I hated him for making me promise, for making me let her go. But still I danced, and I wept, and I raged, and eventually, I fell asleep, and dreamed that my mother smiled as she played the music that the stars themselves danced to. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

POST-A/N: Well? Was it everything you were hoping for? Any suggestions for future chapters- along the same lines or not- are welcome.

In CCD, Sherwood wrote that one of the stable girls on the luggage wagon that was traveling with Ranisia wasn't quite as dead as Galdran's men thought she was, and somehow managed to get back to tell the Count that it was murder.

Also in CCD, it said that Ranisia's living relatives moved to Sles Adran after her wedding to Count Astiar.

I don't know why Mel's mom's body would be brought back like this, but for my purposes, it was.


End file.
